


Falling For You

by afterbaedeker



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 09:55:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterbaedeker/pseuds/afterbaedeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the Battle of Hogwarts "two bodies fell from [a] balcony". Lavender Brown was one of those bodies but that descent was nothing compared to falling for Neville Longbottom in her Seventh Year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling For You

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I don’t profess to have any rights to the _Harry Potter_ franchise nor profit from the following.
> 
> **Warnings:** Neville and Lavender are both seventeen going on eighteen which may be **underage** depending on your jurisdiction.

*

  
_I don't know, but I think I may be fallin' for you._  
Dropping so quickly.  
Maybe I should keep this to myself, waiting 'til I know you better.  
Colbie Callait ~ Fallin' For You

*

Lavender Brown hurled her last Snargaluff pod at the masked Death Eater. The wriggling, green tuber skimmed the hood of Lavender's assailant, doing little to prevent a stinging hex knocking her wand out of hand.

Lavender scanned the corridor for any semblance of assistance. So much for a knight in shining armour riding in on his white horse, or, as Lavender had rather hoped, Neville Longbottom arriving armed with Venomous Tentacular.

He was late.

Sure, the Battle of Hogwarts had begun in earnest: walls were exploding; portraits were screaming; and spells were firing in every conceivable direction, so it would be fair to assume Neville, given the circumstances, may be delayed with good reason. But frankly, the rules of fair play do not apply in war, and, Lavender thought to herself, should she live through this forsaken fray, the rules of fair play sure as Hades would not apply to love.

The Death Eater advanced on Lavender, taunting, "I see now how little Alecto has to work with."

Lavender snorted. "Bitch, please."

Lavender tossed her head causing her snarled ponytail to swish with Gryffindor pluck, dropped her shoulder, and charged.

It was an unexpectedly effective move that had the great element of surprise. Death Eater and foot soldier of Dumbledore's Army alike plunged over the first floor landing, tumbling in a tumult of robes to the surface below.

Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, Lavender seemed to float rather than hurtle downward at a pace that allowed her most pressing unrealised hopes to play out in her mind. 

So it was that Lavender remembered falling for Neville and re-imagined all the times she could have told Neville she loved him but never did.

(i)

Alecto Carrow prowled menacingly between the rows of tables of her seventh year Muggle Studies class. She found this mode of teaching best impressed upon the students the veracity of her lessons.

"The article presents the nexus between Muggles and canines." Amycus strode past Lavender back to the front of the classroom as she asked, "But what danger does the author depict in likening these animals to one another?"

No one spoke.

"Malfoy." Alecto summoned, more than asked, Draco to respond.

He swallowed his exasperation like particularly foul tasting medicine. "Familiarity?"

"Good." Alecto continued pace before the class as she extolled the perils of Muggles to Wizards to the class. "And what example is given to illustrate the shared base needs of the two species?"

"Sexual appetite," offered Pansy Parkinson.

"Five points to Slytherin," congratulated Alecto. "The unchecked carnality of Muggles and mudbloods differs from their animal cousins only in so far as canines do not present to be more than they are."

"Like a canine bitch in heat, the female Muggle will rut any male. This is why Wizards need to be prepared to deflect these creature's unwanted advances. This is one way Lord Voldemort proposes to restore the purity of the Wizarding population."

"What about half bloods?" called out Seamus Finnegan, his fingertips tips turning white from the tight grip he had on his quill. 

Alecto spun in Seamus' direction, raising her wand in retaliation. Before she could exact her corrective instruction, Neville chimed in. "Yeah, remind us again how much Muggle blood you and your brother have."

The classroom was still with collective apprehension, anticipating Alecto's reaction. The wait was short. Neville barely reacted to the blow. He raised his hand to his cheek, and drawing his hand away saw what he suspected - that blood stained his palm.

"Spilling pureblood. What _would_ your Master say?"

"Mudblood lovers deny any entitlement to pureblood status!" screeched Amycus, her nostrils flaring in unbridled anger. She ordered the students to leave, scattering the class with melodramatic gestures. 

Neville did not manage to escape before earning himself a detention with Alecto's equally deranged brother Amycus later that evening. His bleeding cheek would be a footnote to the treatise of pain that would befall him at Amycus' hand.

Lavender chased after Neville as he strode through the corridors. 

"Merlin's balls Neville you've got some nerve," Lavender confided when she caught up to Neville.

He shrugged. "Someone's got to stand up to them."

"And I want to thank you, for, you know, being that someone. Just promise you won't become duelling fodder, yeah?"

"I promise. I'll merely be a human hex sharpener," replied Neville self-deprecatingly.

Lavender swatted Neville on his stomach. "Not. Funny." Neville smiled at her concern.

They walked together in companionable silence through the thoroughfare from the upper levels of the west wing past the Great Hall.

"Where are you going?"

"Greenhouse," answered Neville automatically.

"You're not going to see Madam Pomfrey?"

"Nah, she might get in trouble if C1 or C2 find out."

"Will you let me help? Try, at least, I mean," asked Lavender with unaccountable shyness.

"I'd like that." His smile turned to a wince as the flesh of his cheek protested at the movement.

Lavender grabbed Neville's hand and led him into the nearest empty classroom. She hastily shut the door behind them and spelled the window shutters open to let the sunlight stream in. 

She looked up at Neville's injury, her neck craning to see the wound. "You're so tall." She had never realised that before. "I need you to sit."

He obliged by perching on the edge of the disused teacher's table, his head barely higher than hers now that he was in state of semi-repose.

Lavender looked intently at the gash. She remembered the times when she was small and her mother had cleaned her scrapes with a stinging red ointment, how her mum would dab at her knee or her elbow with small balls of cotton wool, before bandaging the area with a Muggle medical plaster. Her mum would, without fail, lightly kiss the top of the covered sore and whisper ‘all better'. It wasn't the same when her father simply spelled everything better.

"You okay?" Neville interrupted her reminiscences.

"Yeah."

"‘Cause if it's the blood..." 

"No. It's... I was thinking of my mum." Lavender cast _Sanitas_ to spell the wound clean, quickly followed by _Suere_ to heal the gash. As Lavender watched Neville's skin knit itself back together she said, "She's Muggle." 

"Lavender, I don't believe anything the Carrows say. They're liars. One day everyone will know that."

"Thanks Neville."

"No, thank you." He ran his hand over his freshly fixed face. "And not just for now. To be honest, you've kept me going when things get rough." Neville half-laughed at the absurd inadequacy of the idea. "Rougher than usual," he qualified.

Lavender impulsively took Neville's face in both her palms. "Ditto." He smelt like pine needles and fresh dirt, like a woodland of possibilities. A grin ghosted across Neville's too serious face at her touch.

"Since we're being honest," continued Neville, "I should probably tell you there's nothing I'd like more than to kiss you right about now."

Her breathing quickened as he leaned into her, his breath hot against her ear. "I want to kiss you until I forget everything but how you taste."

Lavender needed no further prompting. She turned her head, nudging her nose against his, her mouth seeking his. Neville's hands glided over her upturned face, her cheeks impossibly soft under his calloused fingertips, before scrunching her long chestnut locks in his fists. She tasted like the freshness of oranges laced with the fun of Fizzing Whizzes sherbet for Wizards. 

They kissed with unrestrained enthusiasm like the teenagers they were. Tongues tracing teeth and lips and the tender roofs of mouths, while hands roamed from fisting hair to edging under inconvenient clothing. They kissed until they forgot about the danger Voldemort meant to their families. They kissed until they forgot about the curses, hexes and beatings the Carrows had inflicted upon them. 

They kissed until they only thing they knew was the mingled taste of mint and cocoa with sugar and citrus. Their taste. The taste of one another.

(ii)

Not for the first time, Lavender questioned why she remained at the mockery that was Hogwarts under the tutelage of the Carrows.

If her parents knew she was about to be subjected to the inexpert attempts of overzealous thugs executing Unforgivable Curses she would be back home in Ealing faster than a copy of Witch Weekly sells with Harry bleeding Potter on the cover.

She, and five other unfortunate students, were paraded before Amycus Carrow's afternoon Dark Arts class. 

Vincent Crabbe, who had never shown aptitude at any schooling the Professors of Hogwarts had previously attempted to impart upon him, showed some talent for casting the _Cruciatus Curse_ and regularly volunteered to demonstrate his abilities.

Lavender watched with abject horror as Colin Creevy crumpled to the floor at Crabbe's hand. His pitiful cries were the most terrible sounds she had ever heard. When Colin's punishment ended he was left to twitch in pain on the ground.

Amycus prodded Lavender in the back with his wand tip to force her forward, to be the next to receive the _Cruciatus Curse_.

"Longbottom." 

The sound of C1 calling Neville to curse her rang in Lavender's ears, the sound distant and tinny. The roiling of her stomach increased, bile threatening to rise.

"Yes?" 

"Cast the _Cruciatus Curse_ on this reprobate," Amycus sneered.

Neville looked at his teacher, full and hard. "No."

"I wasn't asking you boy, I was telling you. _Crucio_ her."

"No."

"I can make you," threatened Amycus.

"You can try."

The classroom watched transfixed at the spectacle unfolding before them. No one had refused to do what the Carrows had ordered them to do until now.

" _Crucio_ her or I'll _Crucio_ you."

"So be it."

Amycus's face blotched red at Neville's insubordination. He thought of employing _Imperio_ on the boy but had seen him deflect the attempts of others to control him, so refrained from doing so now. Instead, Amycus whipped his wand in a wide arc that circled the five standing students awaiting punishment and subjected them to _Crucio_ en mass.

"Everyone out," demanded Amycus. "Except Longbottom." 

Neville did not refuse this demand.

*

When Lavender next saw Neville, he was limping through the Gryffindor Common Room. Pavarti nodded grimly when Lavender quickly absented herself from their Divination study group, which, in fairness, was less a scholarly exercise than a transparent excuse facilitated by Professor Trelawney for their friends from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff to seek refuge in Gryffindor Tower.

Lavender easily maneuvered through the room, catching Neville at the bottom of the boys' staircase. "What happened?" she asked.

"It's not important," Neville tried to assure Lavender.

"It's important to me. They hurt you because of me."

Neville's eyes flashed with ire. "Not because of you! They do what they do because they're sadistic cauldron scum."

"Well, I'm sorry all the same."

"Thanks."

"They didn't...I mean, did they, ah, _Crucio_ you?"

"No." 

"Oh, thank Merlin."

"Yeah, I think McGonagall tapped into some latent Hogwarts protection charm. I don't think there'll be anymore Unforgivable practice. I overheard her say something about it to Snape."

Lavender beamed at Neville, her congratulations cut off by the small shake of Neville's head. "I don't want to say anything though until I know for sure."

"Okay," she assured him. "I'll, ah, see you at dinner then."

A look of discomfort fleeted across Neville's features. "Actually, I think I'll skip dinner. I'll see you tomorrow." Neville's smile, although small and strained, was genuinely felt as he took his leave of Lavender, never noticing her dismay.

*

There was no exact moment when she realised, but Lavender knew, without question, that she was falling for Neville. She would go to him tonight and comfort him the way they both desperately needed to be comforted.

"Pavarti, I'm just going to check on Neville. Don't wait, yeah?"

"Sure you are." Pavarti grinned as she threw her arms around Lavender, catching her completely off-guard. "The completely shameless Lav I love is back. Details ‘kay?" 

"I don't know what you're talking about." Lavender's eyes belied the primness of her words.

Pavarti merely arched one perfectly manicured eyebrow in reply before leaving the room the two girls shared.

Lavender inhaled a deep, steadying breath and then sought out Neville: pre-occupier of her every other waking thought; semi-permanent resident in her subconscious; supplier of hope to a castle full of lost and lonely children. She would make him hers.

*

Neville lay atop his bed, sprawled on his stomach: loose red gingham boxers losing a battle to stay above his hips, a baggy yellow tee shirt bunched about his lower back as he flipped through that day's copy of the Daily Prophet, rubbish though it was.

Lavender stood at the entrance to Neville's room, mesmerised by the way his face creased with displeasure and how his mouth twitched into a semi-smirk when in disagreement. 

"Neville."

"Bloody hell Lavender, you startled me!" He gingerly got to his feet, courtesy dictating he stand in her presence. "What are you doing here?"

Lavender plunged headfirst into the unknown: "I want you."

"Want me to what?"

"No, Neville. I don't want you to _do_ anything; you do too damned much for everyone as it is. I want you. I want more than sneaking kisses in between classes." In a rush she continued, "I can't see what's coming but I know there's no time to waste or to worry about chances not taken..." she trailed off as Neville closed the distance between them.

"I'm a chance you want to take?" 

"Yeah." As emphatic as her desire was, his proximity rendered her inarticulate. No one before him had had that effect on her.

"Really? Well best to have at it then," Neville recommended. 

The memories of their sweet and needy kisses exchanged in the classroom days ago faded and was replaced with the fresh experience of urgent coupling.

Neville, one hand skimming Lavender's waist, the other snaking up her neck to fist her long, loose hair, leaned into her upturned face and kissed her. They kissed urgently and insistently, only pausing to suck in gulps of air.

Lavender moulded herself to the lean planes of Neville's chest, her hands roaming under his tee across the smooth expanse of his back. Neville moaned into the hot cavern of Lavender's mouth when she pressed her belly against his stirring cock. Pleased with his reaction, she repeated the movement. 

Her exploring hands slipped under the waistband of his boxers, caressing the firm flesh within. Their mouths sucked rhythmically to the confident tempo of her tugging and twisting. Neville cupped one of Lavender's breasts through the fabric of her school shirt, squeezing and releasing the flesh sporadically. 

Neville broke away from Lavender. "You're sure?" he asked, gently rubbing her arms.

"Surer than anything _ever_ before."

"Brilliant." 

In a flurry of coordinated movement Neville's tee was peeled off and toed under his bed while Lavender undid enough of the top buttons of her blouse to pull it over her head. Lavender then shimmied out of her pleated skirt exposing her pale thighs which seemed to Neville like the stalks of an exotic flower. She reached behind her back and undid the catch of her bra as Neville brushed his hands over her shoulders, gently encouraging her bra to fall to the ground. His hands skimmed down her sides until he reached her underpants. He rubbed his hand over the damp cotton, the edge of his index finger parting the folds of her labia beneath the salmon coloured material. Lavender's breath hitched at Neville's teasing. 

She pulled his face to hers, devouring his mouth once more, staking her equally undeniable claim to his body. She panted into his mouth as he increased his attentions to her nether lips, his fingers exploring until they were under cotton, trailing through pubic hair and slipping between her wet folds. Breaking their kiss with a needy sucking of his bottom lip, Lavender pulled away enough to demand, "I have to have you in me."

Hurriedly casting a redirection and a locking charm in quick succession, Neville guided her to his bed. She scooted her undies down her legs when she positioned herself on his bed, then let her legs loll toward him, inviting him between. Neville quickly pulled his boxers down to his knees and then jiggled one leg to remove them completely. He climbed atop the bed, carefully holding himself above Lavender. Neither spoke, the only sounds in the room were their heavy breaths and quick beating hearts. Lowering himself onto her, into her, they looked at one another with an intensity neither thought they possessed. They rocked together slowly, unsurely at first. Their coupling tentative as they grew accustomed to the feel of one another. When Neville ever so slightly increased the pace, the friction of his pubic bone pressing briefly against Lavender's clitoris elicited a delicious gasp from her. Her walls clenched around his cock causing his breath to catch. Neville's eyes widened in pleased surprise, spurring Lavender on to recreate the sensation. 

"Fuck Lav, I'm ugh--" Neville struggled to form words between thrusts. "So close," he said, voice tight.

Lavender bucked up to meet Neville. "Don't wait for me." Lavender reached a hand between their joined bodies to thrum two fingers across her clit. Neville could only groan as she moved her hand in firm circles and then substantially increased her pace, so it was a frenzy of manipulation between them. Neville sucked in a shallow breath as Lavender's knuckles grazed the base of his cock, eliciting the first gush of his release. He hovered as long as he could above her as he jerked within her, but fell atop her once he was spent. He made to roll off her, out of her, but was stopped by her firm hand pulling his shoulder back down. "Not yet," she begged huskily. His cock was softening inside her, but she still contracted her walls around the intrusion as she teased her clit mercilessly. When she came it was a riot of stars behind her eyelids and murmurings of how beautiful she was.

(iii)

Neville saw a figure hobbling toward him through the panes of glass that walled the greenhouse. When the figure drew nearer he dropped his secateurs and cried, "Fuck!"

Neville raced to meet Michael Corner, who was limping badly, his eyes swollen, his lip split, and his hair plastered with sweat to his forehead.

"You look like you've gone five rounds with a Hungarian Horntail. What happened?" asked Neville as he ushered Michael further into the greenhouse.

"And it feels like it." Michael spat out a mouthful of blood onto the dirt floor. "I got caught by C1 releasing little Holly Abbott."

"Bloody hell Corner."

"I know, I know. Rule One: don't get caught." Michael attempted to shrug, but quickly and painfully discovered his shoulder was dislocated.

"Sit down," Neville instructed. He cast a disrobing spell so Michael sat before Neville robeless and shirtless. Michael's chest was streaked with gashes, making Neville think of the rumoured _Sectumsempra_ curse. His right shoulder was a mottled purple, the ball of the joint clearly protruding from the socket.

"This is going to hurt," warned Neville, as he prepared to pop Michael's shoulder back into place.

"Do it."

With a sickening crunch, and loud grunt from Michael, the shoulder was realigned. With a precision Neville tried not to credit to undue practice, he sterilised Michael's many wounds and stemmed the bleeding from several cuts on his chest.

The side entrance to the greenhouse swooshed open as if from a gust of wind, but rather heralded Lavender's arrival.

"What I can do?" she asked as soon as she saw the scene before her. It occurred to Lavender in that moment that she would do _anything_ Neville asked of her: hide, heal, fight, run. All he had to do was ask.

Before Neville could reply Michael asked, "How's Holly?"

"Scared as anything. She'd been hanging by those manacles for hours before you released her. She's hiding with Trelawney tonight."

"Is that safe?"

"Yeah, McGonagall and Trelawney are absolutely against the Carrows. I trust both of them completely."

Michael nodded at Lavender's vouching, not noticing that Neville had finished tending to his injuries.

"I better get back," Michael sighed, as he experimentally rotated his shoulders.

"Keep out of the Cs way Corner," ordered Neville as Michael stood to leave.

"Sure."

"I'm serious. We need to plan our next move carefully, we can't afford to be careless, and I can't lose anyone. Got it?"

"Yes," assured Michael.

"Alright then."

Lavender watched the exchange between the two boys with a strange sense of pride and sorrow. They were so young, their burdens great, and yet they carried themselves with unfathomable dignity.

"You're hurt," Neville realised, when he saw Lavender flinch _Vanishing_ Michael's ruined clothes.

Lavender looked curiously at her arm which bore thin pink and purple lines from the Carrow's hexes. "It's nothing," she assured him.

Neville shook his head. "It is something. Does it burn?"

"A bit," she admitted.

Neville exhaled with mild disapproval, muttering ‘nothing' under his breath as he sought out his latest herbology achievement - an aloe vera and ashwinder hybrid, his own personal antidote to the Carrow's preferred punishments.

He carefully pruned two long prongs from the plant to dissect and dice before grinding into a fine paste. Lavender watched entranced as he moved confidently about the Greenhouse, finely handling the plants and instruments, levitating a mortar and charming a pestle to work while he further inspected Lavender's arm.

His touch was tender, his large hands easily nursing her forearms as he applied the salve. Lavender hissed at the cool relief of Neville's ministrations. When her injured arms were coated in the healing paste Neville placed a gentle kiss atop Lavender's head.

"The same goes for you," said Neville, thinking back to his words to Michael. "No unplanned rescue missions. Nothing careless. We've got to stick together."

"Of course."

"Okay."

"Okay," cooed Lavender in return. She kissed him in a mute exchange of promises. 

Neville pulled his mouth away from Lavender, and affectionately stroked his thumb across her swollen bottom lip. Her tongue swiped playfully at the digit while her hand snaked beneath his robes to stroke his cock.

"Gods, Lavender. I want more than your hand," moaned Neville.

Smiling, she continued to lathe his thumb with the attention he so obviously desired be directed lower.

"On your knees," he bid her, guiding her down with a firm caress of her shoulders.

Kneeling, she looked up at Neville wantonly. "Tell me what you want me to do?"

"I want that talented tongue of yours to lick my balls."

Which is precisely what Lavender proceeded to do. She licked and nipped and kissed at Neville's swinging testicles, before sucking them into her mouth. His balls swirled in her mouth like oversized gobstoppers. 

"Fuck yes." He groaned at the sensation of being swallowed and the hot air of her breath against the base of his cock as she exhaled though her nose.

"Please," he pleaded. "I want your mouth around my cock."

Lavender let Neville's balls fall from her mouth with a wet _pop_. She ran her tongue from the base of his cock to the weeping tip. She swirled her tongue around the crown before placing a sweet kiss atop the slit. "Like this?" she asked she slid her lips around his hard shaft and took him into her welcoming mouth, inch by delicious inch.

 "Yes," he hissed.

Lavender smiled around the dick in her mouth. She scraped her teeth along the vein that ran the length of his cock, causing Neville to shudder with pleasure. As she bobbed back forth she gripped his arse cheeks in her hands, her blunt fingernails unintentionally indenting the flesh recently abused by the Carrows.

"Ow, fuck." Neville repositioned her hands on his waist, encouraging her to hold the firm planes of his sides rather than the torn flesh of his backside. Hands fisting in the curtains of her hair he fucked her mouth with abandon, relishing the sounds she made when the head of his cock hit the back of her throat. When she wriggled a finger up the crack of his arse to tease his perenium he spasmed jerkily into her mouth.

She swallowed as she stood, wiping the corners of her mouth between thumb and forefinger. She helped Neville raise his pants and re-buckle his belt.

"You?" 

"Next time," she demurred.

There was no doubt there would be a next time.

(iv)

Lavender trudged up the worn staircase to the Owlery. She had been in Divination when the galleon in her robe pocket burned against her thigh, instructing her to meet Neville.

He looked like a man playing at being a school boy in his dishevelled robes and uniform. His face, his body, lacked the appearance of adolescence; he had matured almost beyond recognition these last trying months. When he saw her approach him a myriad of emotions flickered across his face: pleasure, pride, weariness, resolve. Lavender noticed the freshly folded letter in his hand.

"Hiya," she offered as she made her way through the owls. 

"Hi."

Lavender waited for Neville to say whatever it was that was bothering him. Eventually he indicated the letter in his hand. "It's from my gran. She's heard about what's happening here. She told me she was proud of me. That I'm my parents son and to keep it up."

"That's great Neville."

"Yeah."

"Is she okay?"

"Yeah, I mean she's on the run, but she's one hell of a lady." Lavender's eyes widened at the news Augusta Longbottom was doing a runner from the Ministry of Magic. 

"What are you going to do?"

"I've got to go underground."

"Where, exactly, is ‘underground'?"

"Somewhere the Cs can't find me."

"When do we leave?"

Neville looked at Lavender bemused. He had not counted on her assuming her inclusion in his plans.

"You don't."

"Neville--"

"Please," he asked her, holding her small hands in his grown man hands. "I need you stay as long as you can to give comfort and support to those..."

"You're leaving me behind?" Lavender was incredulous.

"Not for long. I'll find you."

"Not if I find you first," swore Lavender. She kissed him as though it would seal their promises to one another.

(v)

Lavender watched Luna lead Harry out of the Room of Requirement on their hastily cobbled together quest for Rowena Ravenclaw's lost diadem, leaving behind Hermione and Ron to field the many questions left unanswered by Harry.

Neville stood apart from the crowd, staring unseeing through the wall Luna and Harry had exited through. Lavender went to Neville and placed her hand upon his ripped robes. 

"What are you thinking?"

Neville shook his head, not at Lavender or her words, but to lift the fog-like thoughts that had begun to descend.

"I just--," Neville started and then paused. "I don't understand Harry. We'd follow him anywhere..."

"We'd follow you, too," Lavender countered. 

"Maybe."

"No, definitely! You say everyone here has proved their loyalty to Harry? To Dumbledore? I'm telling you it's _you_ they're loyal to, that _I'm_ loyal to. What we've proved is our willingness to follow you!"

Lavender dropped her hand from Neville's shoulder, wrapping her arms around her midsection.

"Thanks Lavender, that means a lot."

"Well, so it should," said Lavender with a haughty cock of her head, which caused Neville to laugh.

*

Falling toward the hard ground, how she wished now, that any of the conversations she had floated though, had turned in another direction.

She should have told him she loved him. She should have told him every day she survived to struggle through and rage against another day, because it was true every day.

Lavender hit the ground with a crunch, her knees smashed against the surface, her chest and head, at first cushioned by the Death Eater's body, smacked against the marble after the initial impact.

Her mind went black; sound did not seep into her subconscious.

But then there were stars burning against her eyelids, the sounds of Magic soared about her, and the swoosh of something large shooting across her caused her robes to flutter.

Lavender stirred at all the catastrophic commotion, but the blooming crack at the base of skull, the searing pain that shot through her legs, prevented Lavender from undertaking anything more than the most preliminary of surveys of her surrounds. She shut her eyes against the world.

*

Neville ran to Lavender's falling body, but it seemed the harder he ran to meet her the faster she fell to the ground. It was agonising reaching her after she had fallen, after Greyback had tried to tear at her flesh, to see her twitch in pain. He scooped her up into his strong arms as if she were no heavier than his beloved Mimbulus Mimbletonia.

"Neville?" Lavender's voice was strained, the effort of simply speaking evident in saying his name.

"It's me," he assured her. Neville weaved though the duelling witches and wizards, wandlessly and wordlessly raising shielding and do-not-notice charms as he carried Lavender to relative safety.

"I want to tell you something."

"I'm late?" guessed Neville.

"No. I mean, yeah, you are. But that's not it," said Lavender crossly.

Neville laughed. A sound entirely incongruous given the circumstances. It was the most beautiful sound in Lavender's world: it was a sound to anchor your heart to.

"What is it then?" Neville raced them up a flight of moving stairs.

"I love you."

She smiled as she slumped unconscious in Neville's arms.

*

Neville, filled with the undeniable certainty of his love for Lavender and of her love returned, stepped before the Dark Lord.

*


End file.
